Did you ever know that that little cherry tree, or little apple tree, when you set it out, when it's no bigger than about one half inch tall, that every bushel of apples that you'll ever collect off that tree, is in it right then. If isn't, where does it come from? Who hangs it on there? It's already in it.

The only thing that little tree does, you just set it out and water it. And it has to drink, and drink, until it gets so much, it just goes to pushing up, drinks more than its ‘lotted portion. And it swells out. And it pushes out limbs. It pushes out buds, then it pushes out leaves, then blossoms, and then apples. Then it pushes again; it pushes again, just keeps drinking, drinking, drinking, till it just pushes out.

And that's what the Christian does. When you're planted in Christ Jesus, everything that you have need of in earth's journey is in you when you receive the Holy Spirit. And the only thing you have to do is drink, drink, and push out, push out. Just drink till you can't drink no more. If you have need of Divine healing, go to God's Word and drink from It, until you push out. If you need more of God, just keep drinking, pushing out.

And Christ is the inexhaustible Fountain of Life. And if you're planted in Him, the only thing you have to do, is drink of His goodness and push out whatever you have need of in this earth's journey. It's all drinking, resting, peace. It's not what you struggle and strive and pull at, you defeat the very purpose that you're representing when you do that.

Christianity is not something, God's not One you have to beg, and cry, and plead, and fast, and starve, and everything like that to get to. Certainly not. I'm not degrading a fast. But here not long ago, a man wrote a book on fasting. My, women come into the meeting, and men, who'd went on those fasts that were insane. They went just because the book said to fast forty days. Some of them with false plates, and their teeth would drop out. And their eyes would sink back. And mothers-to-be to-- women to be mothers, their little ones as you understand, they would completely go mentally out, and be taken to the institutions. Many, many of them, come in that condition.

I believe in fasting. Certainly. But when you fast, you don't hunger. Jesus after He had got through fasting, the Bible said, He was hungry. God puts a fast on you. You don't put it on yourself.

He certainly captured the women, the man did that wrote the book, when he said, put a picture of a woman there, she looked twenty years younger, said, after the fast. You ought to seen her then, just about a year later what she looked like, after that. See? Certainly.

You don't do that. You don't do things by works. It's by grace. God in sovereign grace--

-- Brother Branham
January 21, 1956